We aim to provide our Service Providers partners with a blue print to develop a successful partner program, and in turn, expand your business reach – in Part 1 of this series, we’ll cover how to prepare building your partner program.

Partnering Essentials

First thing’s first – before you build your partner program, you should ask yourself a few questions:

What role will your partners play in expanding your Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) business?

What unique and compelling value proposition will you be offering to partners?

How will you test and refine your partner engagement model and value proposition?

Once you establish answers to these questions, you can start building a partner program Pilot phase.

Select the Right Solution Provider Engagement Models

In the IaaS market, there are three predominant engagement models: agent, reseller and white label. When selecting an engagement model, consider whether you want your partners to:

Refer deals;

Close sales;

Bill the customer;

Provider customer support;

Or use the partner’s hosting brand.

The choice of the appropriate engagement model, or combination of models, is crucial to the success of your partner strategy – program elements, resourcing and business goals/outcomes can all pivot significantly based on which engagement models you deploy.

Note: Implementing an agent model is far easier than implementing a reseller or white label model.

Craft a Compelling Value Proposition for Your Solution Providers

Before you start recruiting your partners, create a compelling value proposition that explains not only how you will help partners grow their businesses, but also why they should work with you and not your competition. VSPP partners have the ability to leverage the strengths of vCloud Powered offerings in their value proposition.

For example, Solution Provider partners can leverage their existing VMware virtualization customer base and existing sales and marketing process by partnering with a VMware Service Provider and selling public cloud solutions based on VMware technology.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in this series in which we’ll cover how to begin executing your partner program. For a more detailed guide on how to develop a successful partner program for your business, visit Partner Central and download the VSPP Partner Manual, and be sure to also follow us on Twitter at @vCloud and @VMwareSP for future updates!